Friday update: The PCB manufacture might take a week longer than we anticipated, since PayPal got iffy about such a large transfer which delayed it slightly. Our Canadian Electronics Overlord assures us everything’s going to be fine, and we don’t question him, ever.

Progress with the PC and Linux versions are going swimmingly. Everything is mostly working and we’re concentrating on performance and a few audio improvements now. The Mac OSX version has had some teething issues, but we already know what the problem is and how to solve it.

Once we have a successful PC playthrough (on low-end hardware with no frame drops), we’ll start thinking about our achievements list, and get on with the save file feature.

The Collector’s Edition box sets are under way, we have a few designs ready and some quotes from the factory, just making some finishing touches and hopefully we can show one off soon.

We’re in talks with a few event organisers to bring Tanglewood around the UK leading up to release, we’ll let you know which ones we’ll be attending soon!

We get a mention or two in this month’s edition of Retro Gamer Magazine! Our lead developer talks to the mag about what’s it’s been like working on the system. It also comes with some free Mega Drive stickers, if that seals the deal for you.

Don’t forget our new demo is out! Have a play of our latest iteration of the first chapter, there’s a bunch of improvements from the last demo, from controls to physics to A.I. to clone system support and more!

We’re still tracking down an issue with the game on Japanese VA0 consoles using Everdrive models X5 and X7. No other systems or Everdrives seem to be affected so far, we’ll keep you posted on what we find and will issue updated ROMs for those playing on these machines.

Star Ark is a science fiction game being developed for the Sega Genesis. The game is set on an interstellar colony ship. The player is a member of the crew who must put down a mutiny and set the ship back on course. The 8 Bit Daddy Daughter Team recently posted an update.

Quote:

Recently wiped out a lot of the old videos and images from Twitter. I think this one gives a nice idea of the overall feel of the physical game play environment. Still need to add NPCs and all sorts of other fun stuff.

We’ve crossed the €10,000 boundary! Huge thanks to everyone! 😀 I’m currently calculating on the costs involved to get the main character redrawn by a pro pixel artist to have it dance a bit more. Also, bisons ftw! #tänzer

A very exciting update – TANGLEWOOD has been signed off by our QA teams and we have our GOLD 1.0 build!

What happens next?

PCB Burning

The final ROM is now with our trusty Canadian engineers at db electronics, who are making last minute arrangements with the factory handling our PCB manufacture. We’re awaiting details of the first control batch, turnaround times, and some details we’ll need to test the boards when they arrive here.

Cartridge Assembly

In the meantime, it’s all hands on deck to finish the last few bits needed for assembling the carts. A lot of exciting boxes have started arriving with power tools, label printers, barcode scanners, packaging gear, work surfaces, and premium coffee, ready to get cracking with our first batch. We’re going to be trialling the first lot in my home to see how efficiently we can work with the space available, but we have plans to rent a small industrial unit nearby if we run out of storage space.

PC/Mac/Linux Harness

We’re aiming to have the PC, Mac, and Linux emulated versions ready to roll on our Steam and itch.io pages very shortly after the first cartridges are shipped, which means getting our harness emulator up to scratch. We trialled this back during the Kickstarter, but the game has since been through some significant changes, so our emulator needed a few updates to be able to handle the game smoothly again. Thankfully we managed to crack most of it over the weekend, but it still needs the same care and attention from QA as the game itself – there are a lot of machine configurations to cater for, and a lot of controller types!

We also need to integrate some Steam stuff like cloud saves, rich presence, and achievements, all of which involve some minor changes to probe the game’s memory as it’s running. Nothing tricky, just tedious and time consuming.

Press, Social Media, Streamers, Let’s Players

We’ve got a lot of work to do to prepare for our launch – contacting press, updating our social media accounts, and catching the attention of Twitch and YouTube streamers to try and gain some Let’s Play coverage. We’ll also be teasing some of the soundtrack leading up to release.